Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five Nobel Prizes bequested by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. Nobel's inventions including dynamite and Ballistite led to the death of millions of people, so he created the Nobel Prizes in an effort to make up for these perceived evils. According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Oslo, the capital of Norway, unlike the prizes in economics, physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature, which are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. For the past decade, the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony has been followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which is broadcast to over 150 countries and more than 450 million households around the world. The Concert has received worldwide fame and the participation of top celebrity hosts and performers. The selection of Nobel Prize winners sometimes causes controversy. In the case of the Peace Prize, controversial winners include former warmongers and former terrorists whom the Committee may select for exceptional concessions in the attempt to achieve peace.
Appointment process
The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the Laureate for the Peace Prize. The Committee chairman, currently Dr. Ole Danbolt Mjøs, awards the Prize itself. At the time of Alfred Nobel's death Sweden and Norway were in a personal union in which the Swedish government was solely responsible for foreign policy, and the Norwegian Parliament was responsible only for Norwegian domestic policy. Alfred Nobel never explained [1] why he wanted a Norwegian rather than Swedish body to award the Peace Prize. As a consequence, many people have speculated about Nobel's intentions. For instance, Nobel may have wanted to prevent the manipulation of the selection process by foreign powers, and as Norway did not have any foreign policy, the Norwegian government could not be influenced. Alternately, Nobel may have hoped that a prize to Norway would soften the nationalistic movement in Norway, which at this time was arguing for a split of the Union. Other theories point out that the Norwegian Assembly (Storting) was the first national legislature to vote support for the international peace movement, or that Nobel admired Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the Norwegian patriot and leading author at that time.
Nominations
Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors, international judges, and special advisors to the Prize Committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The Committee keeps the nominations secret and asks that nominators do the same. Over time many individuals have become known as "Nobel Peace Prize Nominees", but this designation has no official standing [2]. Nominations from 1901 to 1951, however, have been released in a database. When the past nominations were released it was discovered that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939, though the nomination was retracted in February of the same year. Other infamous nominees included Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize may be awarded to persons or organizations that are in the process of resolving an issue, or creating world peace rather than upon the resolution of the issue. Since the Prize can be given to individuals involved in ongoing peace processes, some of the awards now appear, with hindsight, questionable, particularly when those processes failed to bear lasting fruit. For example, the awards given to Theodore Roosevelt, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, Lê Ðức Thọ, and Henry Kissinger were particularly controversial and criticized; the latter prompted two dissenting Committee members to resign [3]. Right-leaning groups have also criticized the Nobel Committee for a perceived left-leaning bias in its decisions.
In 2005, the Nobel Peace Center opened. It serves to present the Laureates, their work for peace, and the ongoing problems of war and conflict around the world.
Controversy
The Nobel Peace Prize has throughout its history sparked controversy. The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Peace Prize Committee, but pacifist critics argue that the same Parliament has pursued partisan military aims by ratifying membership in NATO in 1949, by hosting NATO troops, and by leasing ports and territorial waters to US ballistic missile submarines in 1983. However, the Parliament has no say in the award issue. A member of the Committee cannot at the same time be a member of the Parliament, and the Committee includes former members from all major parties, including those parties that oppose NATO membership.
A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary Nobel Prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the intellectual achievement, thus representing a time-proven confirmation and balance of approval by the established academic community, seldom contradicted by newer developments. In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize at times takes the form of summary judgment, being issued in the same year as or the year immediately following the political act. Some commentators have suggested that to award a peace prize on the basis of unquantifiable contemporary opinion is unjust or possibly erroneous, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves be said to be impartial observers. The 20th Century fight against Communism is one example that stands out most noticeably in this regard. This situation may be said to deprive the 'real' peace makers, who may not be recognized for their long-term or subtle approaches. However, others have pointed to the uniqueness of the Peace Prize in that its high profile can often focus world attention on particular problems and possibly aid in the peace-efforts themselves.
On closer inspection, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an African-American Christian civil rights activist (1964 laureate); Mother Teresa, a Catholic missionary nun (1979 laureate); and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy activist (1991 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei. Others, even today, are quite controversial, due to the recipient's political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate), Mikhail Gorbachev (1990 laureate) or Yasser Arafat (1994 laureate) (whose Fatah movement began as a terrorist organization). Finally, the Peace Prize draws criticism for candidates whom it overlooks, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John XXIII, Steve Biko, Hélder Câmara, Raphael Lemkin and Oscar Romero, although Gandhi would have won had he not been assassinated.
Laureates
List of Nobel Prize laureates in Peace from 1901 to the present day.
| Year | Individual or Organization | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1901 | Jean Henri Dunant (Switzerland) | founder of the Red Cross and initiator of the Geneva Convention. |
| Frédéric Passy (France) | founder and president of the Société Française pour l'arbitrage entre nations. | |
| 1902 | Élie Ducommun (Switzerland) and Charles Albert Gobat | honorary secretaries of the Permanent International Peace Bureau in Berne. |
| 1903 | Sir William Randal Cremer (UK) | secretary of the International Arbitration League. |
| 1904 | Institut de droit international (Gent, Belgium). | |
| 1905 | Bertha Sophie Felicitas Baronin von Suttner, née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau (Austria-Hungary) | writer, honorary president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau. |
| 1906 | Theodore Roosevelt (USA) | president of the United States, for drawing up the peace treaty in the Russo-Japanese War. |
| 1907 | Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (Italy) | president of the Lombard League of Peace. |
| Louis Renault (France) | professor of International Law. | |
| 1908 | Klas Pontus Arnoldson (Sweden) | founder of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Association. |
| Fredrik Bajer (Denmark) | honorary president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau. | |
| 1909 | Auguste Marie Francois Beernaert (Belgium) | member of the Cour Internationale d'Arbitrage. |
| Paul-Henri-Benjamin d'Estournelles de Constant (France) | founder and president of the French parliamentary group for international arbitration. Founder of the Comité de défense des intérets nationaux et de conciliation internationale | |
| 1910 | Bureau International Permanent de la Paix (Permanent International Peace Bureau), Berne. | |
| 1911 | Tobias Michael Carel Asser (Netherlands) | initiator of the International Conferences of Private Law in The Hague. |
| Alfred Hermann Fried (Austria-Hungary) | founder of Die Waffen Nieder. | |
| 1912 | Elihu Root (USA) | for initiating various arbitration agreements. |
| 1913 | Henri la Fontaine (Belgium) | president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau. |
| 1914 | not awarded | World War I |
| 1915 | not awarded | World War I |
| 1916 | not awarded | World War I |
| 1917 | International Red Cross, Geneva. | |
| 1918 | Not awarded | |
| 1919 | Woodrow Wilson (USA) | president of the United States, for founding the League of Nations. |
| 1920 | Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois (France) | president of the Council of the League of Nations. |
| 1921 | Hjalmar Branting (Sweden) | prime minister, Swedish delegate to the Council of the League of Nations. |
| Christian Lous Lange (Norway) | secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union | |
| 1922 | Fridtjof Nansen (Norway) | Norwegian delegate to the League of Nations, originator of the Nansen passports for refugees. |
| 1923 | Not awarded | |
| 1924 | ||
| 1925 | Sir Austen Chamberlain (UK) | for the Locarno Treaties. |
| Charles Gates Dawes (USA) | chairman of the Allied Reparation Commission and originator of the Dawes Plan. | |
| 1926 | Aristide Briand (France) | for the Locarno Treaties. |
| Gustav Stresemann (Germany) | for the Locarno Treaties. | |
| 1927 | Ferdinand Buisson (France) | founder and president of the League for Human Rights. |
| Ludwig Quidde (Germany) | delegate to numerous peace conferences. | |
| 1928 | Not awarded | |
| 1929 | Frank B. Kellogg (USA) | for the Briand-Kellogg Pact. |
| 1930 | Archbishop Lars Olof Nathan (Jonathan) Söderblom (Sweden) | leader of the ecumenical movement. |
| 1931 | Jane Addams (USA) | international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom |
| Nicholas Murray Butler (USA) | for promoting the Briand-Kellogg Pact. | |
| 1932 | Not awarded | |
| 1933 | Sir Norman Angell (Ralph Lane) (UK) | writer, member of the Executive Committee of the League of Nations and the National Peace Council. |
| 1934 | Arthur Henderson (UK) | chairman of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference |
| 1935 | Carl von Ossietzky (Germany) | pacifist journalist. |
| 1936 | Carlos Saavedra Lamas (Argentina) | president of the League of Nations and mediator in a conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia. |
| 1937 | The Viscount Cecil of Chelwood | founder and president of the International Peace Campaign. |
| 1938 | Nansen International Office For Refugees, Geneva. | |
| 1939 | Not awarded | World War II |
| 1940 | Not awarded | World War II |
| 1941 | Not awarded | World War II |
| 1942 | Not awarded | World War II |
| 1943 | Not awarded | World War II |
| 1944 | International Committee of the Red Cross (awarded retroactively in 1945). | |
| 1945 | Cordell Hull (USA) | for co-initiating the United Nations. |
| 1946 | Emily Greene Balch (USA) | honorary international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom |
| John R. Mott (USA) | chairman of the International Missionary Council and president of the World Alliance of Young Men's Christian Associations | |
| 1947 | The Friends Service Council (UK) and The American Friends Service Committee (USA) | on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers. |
| 1948 | Not awarded | Apparently it would have been awarded to Mahatma Gandhi had he not been assassinated. See the Nobel e-museum article. [4] |
| 1949 | The Lord Boyd-Orr (UK) | director general Food and Agricultural Organization, president National Peace Council, president World Union of Peace Organizations. |
| 1950 | Ralph Bunche (USA) | for mediating in Palestine (1948). |
| 1951 | Léon Jouhaux (France) | president of the International Committee of the European Council, vice president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, vice president of the World Federation of Trade Unions, member of the ILO Council, delegate to the UN. |
| 1952 | Albert Schweitzer (Germany) | for founding the Lambarene Hospital in Gabon. |
| 1953 | American Secretary of State George Catlett Marshall | for the Marshall Plan. |
| 1954 | The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. | |
| 1955 | Not awarded | |
| 1956 | Not awarded | |
| 1957 | Lester Bowles Pearson (Canada) | president of the 7th session of the United Nations General Assembly for introducing peacekeeping forces to resolve the Suez Crisis. |
| 1958 | Georges Pire (Belgium) | leader of L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde, a relief organization for refugees. |
| 1959 | Philip Noel-Baker (UK) | for his lifelong ardent work for international peace and co-operation. |
| 1960 | Albert Lutuli (South Africa) | president of the ANC (African National Congress). |
| 1961 | Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden) | secretary-general of the UN (awarded posthumously). |
| 1962 | Linus Carl Pauling (USA) | for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing. |
| 1963 | International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva. | |
| League of Red Cross Societies, Geneva. | ||
| 1964 | Martin Luther King Jr (USA) | Leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, campaigner for civil rights. [5] |
| 1965 | United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) | |
| 1966 | Not awarded | |
| 1967 | ||
| 1968 | René Cassin (France) | president of the European Court of Human Rights. |
| 1969 | International Labour Organization (I.L.O.), Geneva. | |
| 1970 | Norman Borlaug (USA) | for research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. |
| 1971 | Chancellor Willy Brandt (West Germany) | for West Germany's Ostpolitik, embodying a new attitude towards Eastern Europe and East Germany. |
| 1972 | Not awarded | |
| 1973 | Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (USA) and Foreign Minister Lê Ðức Thọ (Vietnam, declined) | for the Vietnam peace accord. |
| 1974 | Seán MacBride (Ireland) | president of the International Peace Bureau and the Commission of Namibia of the United Nations. |
| Eisaku Sato (佐藤榮作) (Japan) | prime minister. | |
| 1975 | Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (USSR) | for his campaigning for human rights. |
| 1976 | Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan | founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later renamed Community of Peace People). |
| 1977 | Amnesty International, London | for its campaign against torture. |
| 1978 | President Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat (Egypt) and Prime Minister Menachem Begin (Israel) | for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel. |
| 1979 | Mother Teresa (India) | poverty awareness campaigner (India) |
| 1980 | Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Argentina) | human rights |
| 1981 | The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. | |
| 1982 | Alva Myrdal (Sweden) and Alfonso García Robles (Mexico) | delegates to the United Nations General Assembly on Disarmament. |
| 1983 | Lech Wałęsa (Poland) | founder of Solidarność and campaigner for human rights. Later served as the first president of Poland after the fall of Communism |
| 1984 | Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu (South Africa) | for his work against apartheid. |
| 1985 | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Boston. | |
| 1986 | Elie Wiesel (USA) | author, Holocaust survivor |
| 1987 | President Óscar Arias Sánchez (Costa Rica) | for initiating peace negotiations in Central America. |
| 1988 | United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces. | For participation in numerous conflicts since 1956. As of the time of the award, 736 people from a variety of nations had lost their lives in peacekeeping efforts. |
| 1989 | Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. | for his consistent resistance to the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain their liberty. |
| 1990 | President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (USSR) | "for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community" |
| 1991 | Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar) | "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights" |
| 1992 | Author Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala) | "in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples" |
| 1993 | President Nelson Mandela (South Africa) and former President Frederik Willem de Klerk (South Africa) | "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa" |
| 1994 | PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (Egypt), Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (שמעון פרס) (Israel) and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (יצחק רבין) (Israel) | "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East" |
| 1995 | Joseph Rotblat (Poland/UK) and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs | "for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms" |
| 1996 | Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo (East Timor) and José Ramos Horta (East Timor) | "for their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor" |
| 1997 | International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and Jody Williams (USA) | "for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines" |
| 1998 | John Hume and David Trimble (both Northern Ireland, UK) | "Awarded for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland" |
| 1999 | Médecins Sans Frontières, Brussels. | "in recognition of the organization's pioneering humanitarian work on several continents" |
| 2000 | President Kim Dae Jung (김대중) (South Korea) | "for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular" |
| 2001 | The United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan (Ghana) | "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world" |
| 2002 | Jimmy Carter (USA) - former President of the United States | "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development" |
| 2003 | Shirin Ebadi (شيرين عبادي), (Iran) | "for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children." |
| 2004 | Wangari Maathai (Kenya) | "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace" |
| 2005 | The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBaradei (محمد البرادعي) (Egypt) | "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way" |
See also
- International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
- Nobel Prize
- Norwegian Nobel Committee
- Sweden-Norway
- Lenin Peace Prize
External links
- Norwegian Nobel Committee
- The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Peace, 1901-1951
- Nobel Prize for Peace Better World Links
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